Archive
OFFICER DOWN———Deputy Sheriff Christopher Dewey
Deputy Sheriff Christopher Dewey
Mahnomen County Sheriff’s Office
Minnesota
End of Watch: Monday, August 9, 2010
Biographical Info
Age: 26
Tour of Duty: 6 years
Badge Number: 909
Incident Details
Cause of Death: Gunfire
Date of Incident: Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Weapon Used: Gun; Unknown type
Suspect Info: Not available
Deputy Chris Dewey succumbed to gunshot wounds sustained 18 months earlier after responding to reports of a drunk driver and shots fired in the city of Mahnomen.
On February 18, 2009, Deputy Dewey responded to the call in the town of Mahnomen. When he arrived, he encountered two suspects and a physical confrontation ensued. He was shot in the head and abdomen by one of the men. When back-up units arrived, they found Deputy Dewey and transported him to the hospital.
A search for the suspect led to a nine-hour standoff at mobile home that was near the scene of the incident. The suspect eventually surrendered to police.
Deputy Dewey underwent a series of operations and required rehabilitative care following the initial shooting. In July, he was moved into hospice care where he died from his wounds on August 9, 2010.
Prior to Deputy Dewey’s death, the suspect was charged with attempted murder and 20 felony counts in connection with the incident.
Deputy Dewey had served with the Mahnomen County Sheriff’s Office for six years. He is survived by his wife.
Agency Contact Information
Mahnomen County Sheriff’s Office
PO Box 440
Mahnomen, MN 56557
Phone: (218) 935-2255
Please contact the Mahnomen County Sheriff’s Office for funeral arrangements or for survivor benefit fund information.
Hospital employee attacks on the rise www.privateofficer.com
COLUMBUS, Ohio Aug 11 2010 – Emergency room nurse Erin Riley suffered bruises, scratches and a chipped tooth last year from trying to pull the clamped jaws of a psychotic patient off the hand of a doctor at a suburban Cleveland hospital.
A second assault just months later was even more upsetting: She had just finished cutting the shirt off a drunken patient and was helping him into his hospital gown when he groped her.
“The patients always come first — and I don’t think anybody has a question about that — but I don’t think it has to be an either-or situation,” said Riley, a registered nurse for five years.
Violence against nurses and other medical professionals appears to be increasing around the country as the number of drug addicts, alcoholics and psychiatric patients showing up at emergency rooms climbs.
Nurses have responded, in part, by seeking tougher criminal penalties for assaults against health care workers.
“It’s come to the point where nurses are saying, `Enough is enough. The slapping, screaming and groping are not part of the job,’” said Joseph Bellino, president of the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety, which represents professionals who manage security at hospitals.
Visits to ERs for drug- and alcohol-related incidents climbed from about 1.6 million in 2005 to nearly 2 million in 2008, according to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. From 2006 to 2008, the number of those visits resulting in violence jumped from 16,277 to 21,406, the agency said.
Nurses and experts in mental health and addiction say the problem has only been getting worse since then because of the downturn in the economy, as cash-strapped states close state hospitals, cut mental health jobs, eliminate addiction programs and curtail other services.
After her second attack in a year, Riley began pushing her hospital to put uniformed police on duty.
The American College of Emergency Physicians has recommended other safety measures, including 24-hour security guards, coded ID badges, bulletproof glass and “panic buttons” for medical staff to push. Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital is among hospitals that have had success with metal detectors, confiscating 33 handguns, 1,324 knives, and 97 Mace sprays in the first six months of the program.
But there are practical and philosophical obstacles to locking down an ER. Bellino and others say safety begins with training health care workers to recognize signs of impending violence and defuse volatile situations with their tone of voice, their body language, even the time-outs parents use with children.
He said nurses, doctors, administrators and security guards should have a plan for working together when violence erupts. “In my opinion, every place we’ve put teamwork in, we’ve been able to de-escalate the violence and keep the staff safer,” he said.
Also, he and others said it is important to combat the notion among police, prosecutors, courts — and, at times, nurses themselves, who are often reluctant to press charges — that violence is just part of the job.
“There’s a real acceptance of violence. We’re still dealing with that really intensely,” said Donna Graves, a University of Cincinnati professor who is helping the federal government study solutions.
Robert Glover, executive director of the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors, said economic hard times are the worst time for cuts to mental health programs because anxieties about job loss and lack of insurance increase drug and alcohol use and family fights.
“Most of them, if it’s a crisis, will end up in emergency rooms,” he said.
Vermont nurse David DeRosia, who has been attacked at work, said patients want McDonald’s-like fast service even when they visit busy emergency rooms. When they don’t get it, some lash out.
“They want to be able to pop in and get what they need immediately, when the emergency department has to see the sickest patients first,” he said. “There are many people who have unrealistic expectations they can get whatever they want immediately, and it isn’t a reality.”
What has heightened fears among nurses and other health professionals is that attacks have become more violent, Graves said. “What’s bringing attention to it now is the type of violence: the increase in guns, in weapons coming in, in drugs, the many psychiatric patients, the alcohol, the people with dementia,” she said.
Twenty-six states apply tougher penalties for assaults against on-the-job health care workers. A renewed push to stiffen punishment began the Emergency Nurses Association reported last year that more than half of 3,465 emergency nurses who participated in an anonymous, online survey had been assaulted at work.
“It came as news to me that they are one of the most assaulted professions out there,” said state Rep. Denise Driehaus, who is pushing tougher nurse-assault penalties in Ohio.
Yet bills making an assault on a nurse a felony instead of a misdemeanor failed in North Carolina and Vermont during sessions that just ended, and Virginia shunted its proposal to a state crime commission.
Rita Anderson, a former emergency nurse who pioneered efforts in New York in 1996 to make it a felony to assault a nurse, said resistance is often strong — among both nurses and law enforcement officials.
In 1999, after her jaw was dislocated by a 250-pound teenager, Anderson pursued charges under the state law she had worked hard to pass. She said police were surprised a nurse would press charges against a patient, and prosecutors were skeptical of the case.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re drunk or you’re on drugs or you’re in pain,” she said. “That doesn’t give you the right to hit another person.”
Seattle ER nurse Jeaux Rinehart had learned to get outside fast to avoid kicks, spit, scratches and punches on the job at Virginia Mason Hospital. Then one day in 2007 Rinehart didn’t move quickly enough and a junkie who had entered the ER in search of a fix smashed him in the face with a billy club. Bones broken, Rinehart sucked meals from a straw for weeks.
“A thing like that sticks in your mind to the point where it’s always there, it’s always present,” Rinehart said. “I’m on heightened alert a hundred percent of the time.”
Rinehart was attacked again in July. An intoxicated patient punched and spit on him, then threatened to come back with a gun and kill him. He is pursuing felony charges.
Source:AP
Heavily armed man robs Myrtle Beach resort www.privateofficer.com
According to an incident report, officers were called the Boardwalk Beach Resort, 2301 N Ocean Blvd for a reported armed robbery.
Witnesses told police a black male entered the hotel around 10 p.m. and asked for a room and then pulled a “uzi” looking gun and demanded money.
The suspect had on a ball cap, blue shirt with a brown shirt or sweater underneath.
Witnesses told police the suspect was wearing a black glove and she remembered seeing that on robbery poster.
Capt. David Knipes said his department is investigating this robbery further to see if there’s any connection with the five recent armed robberies of various hotels and businesses.
Deming woman tried running down mall security officer www.privateofficer.com
LAS CRUCES NM Aug 11 2010 – A Deming woman arrested last year for felony shoplifting was caught once again Sunday – after nearly crashing into a mall security guard as she fled the scene.
Guadalupe Verdugo-Duarte, 48, was charged with one felony count of shoplifting and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and additional charges are possible, according to a Tuesday news release.
Las Cruces police were called to the Mesilla Valley mall shortly after 1:30 p.m. Sunday after a J.C. Penney security guard tried stopping a woman who was allegedly seen shoplifting from the store. After Verdugo-Duarte allegedly fled the scene, nearly striking the guard, an officer spotted the vehicle as it neared the Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 10 westbound and detained Verdugo-Duarte.
In the car were numerous items of clothing and the woman’s 15-year-old daughter, who has not been charged with any crime. Detectives believe Verdugo-Duarte regularly travels to Las Cruces on weekends where she steals merchandise from stores and later earns money by selling the items in Deming.
Verdugo-Duarte was arrested Sept. 13, 2009 by Las Cruces police after Kohl’s department store employees witnessed her removing more than $500 in merchandise from the store at 2500 N. Triviz Dr. As in Sunday’s case, the woman had brought her daughter with her. Detectives in 2009 found 80 articles of clothing, plus several bottles of perfumes and beauty products from various stores in Las Cruces, all without proof of purchase.
The woman was jailed Sunday at the Dona Ana County Detention Center with bond set at $10,000
Source:Las Cruces Sun Daily
Scott County KY teacher arrested for selling drugs to student www.privateofficer.com
Susan L. Charron, 41, of Georgetown was arrested on a grand jury indictment warrant and charged with first-degree possession of a controlled substance, state police said. A news release said Charron had pills but did not describe them.
Police had received a complaint in late April 2010 that a high school teacher allegedly was selling prescription pills to a student.
Detectives looked into the allegation and confiscated prescription medication from the teacher. The investigation results were taken to a Scott County grand jury, which returned an indictment.
Charron was in the Scott County jail Tuesday morning in lieu of a $5,000 cash bond.
Source:Kentucky.com
Mall guard guilty in robbery of co-worker www.privatyeofficer.com
John Steven Thompson, 18, of Arnold, pleaded guilty to one count of robbery as part of a plea agreement with the state. In exchange for the plea, prosecutors agreed to drop several additional charges and seek an active sentence no longer than 18 months.
Thompson’s accomplice, Eric Siu-Ben Cheung, also 18, of Arnold, entered into a similar agreement last month in front of Circuit Court Judge Paul A. Hackner. He also was ordered to serve six months in jail.
The motives behind Thompson and Cheung’s actions remained in dispute Monday in county Circuit Court in Annapolis.
Prosecutors claimed that Thompson zip-tied the hands of 18-year-old Chris Shade because Shade got him in trouble with their boss. But a defense attorney for Thompson claimed it was just an “April Fool’s joke” gone awry.
“It was not a prank,” said Shade, who was punched and kicked during the March 31 attack.
“There was nothing funny about what these men did,” said Assistant State’s Attorney Crighton Chase.
According to prosecutors, Thompson and Cheung donned masks before they entered the mall in Parole. Cheung was armed with a weapon that appeared to be a handgun, but that police later determined was a pellet gun.
Chase said the men attacked Shade as he walked into the mall near Chipotle, knocked him through the doors and wrestled him into submission on the sidewalk outside. They then put a bag over his head until he passed out.
Chase said the men dragged Shade into a storage closet and used plastic zip ties to tie him to a pipe. After that, they took his handcuffs, cell phone and keys, stole his security vehicle and drove away from the mall.
Shade – who saw Thompson’s face during the fight – was rescued shortly after the attack by another mall employee, Chase said. He was taken by ambulance to Anne Arundel Medical Center in Parole, where he was treated for minor injuries and released.
Thompson and Cheung ditched the security vehicle on Log Inn Road near Sandy Point State Park, police said. Officers searched the area and found the culprits walking nearby on College Parkway.
According to prosecutors, Thompson was a security guard at the mall at the time of the attack and Cheung was a former security guard.
Chase argued Monday in court that the attack was motivated by revenge. Shade caught Thompson playing in the mall after hours a few weeks before the incident and told his supervisors what he’d witnessed. The information led their bosses to reprimand Thompson, the prosecutor said.
John Robinson III, a defense attorney representing Thompson, argued that the incident was just a prank. He said Shade was targeted only because “he was the guy working that night.”
Robinson acknowledged that his client took the joke too far, explaining that Thompson and Cheung panicked and left Shade in the closet when they heard over their hand-held radio that police were on their way to investigate a report of a tussle outside the mall. He said the original plan was for them to just drive the security vehicle around the mall, then go and untie Shade after a few minutes.
“It was only meant as a prank … but I took it too far,” Thompson said Monday in court before apologizing to Shade, his own family and the court. “This prank went completely against how I was raised.”
More than a dozen friends and family members attended Monday’s hearing to support Thompson. They told the court Thompson was a former Boy Scout who had always been a good kid and enjoyed helping others. They said he wanted to join the Marine Corps before he was arrested.
Hackner blasted Thompson’s behavior as “mean-spirited” and the work of a “warped commando.”
He sentenced Thompson to four years in prison with all but six months suspended. Upon his release, Thompson will be on supervised probation for five years, Hackner said.
While the judge said he would consider granting Thompson a probation before judgment in three years and letting him wipe the incident off his criminal record, Hackner hoped the conviction would keep Thompson out of the military. He said he had “no intention” of helping Thompson join the Marine Corps.
“God spare us from having a guy like you in the military,” Hackner said. “The last thing I want is for somebody who has such little impulse control and such bad judgment to be in charge of a real weapon in a real war setting.”
Shade, who hopes to join the county Police Department in a couple years when he is old enough to attend the training academy, seconded that.
“I wouldn’t trust him with a gun,” Shade said.
Source:Hometown Annapolis
NYC settles with family of security guard killed by police www.privateofficer.com
The killing outside a West Side bar was seen by some as an emblem of concerns about racism in law enforcement and of the temperament of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. He refused at first to meet with the victim’s family or to express sympathy and released Mr. Dorismond’s sealed juvenile arrest record, saying he did so to show that the victim was not ”an altar boy.”
Yesterday, the city’s lawyers issued a statement describing the March 16, 2000, shooting of Mr. Dorismond as a tragedy and repeating the conclusion of a grand jury that no one intended the gun to go off.
”The city continues to feel deep sympathy for the Dorismond family on the accidental death of their son and father,” said the statement from Muriel Goode-Trufant, the chief of the City Law Department’s special federal litigation division. The statement continued, ”Under all the circumstances,” it was appropriate to compensate Mr. Dorismond’s family. Mr. Giuliani eventually said he had made a mistake in not clearly expressing sympathy.
The settlement, first reported yesterday in The Daily News, was reached Monday night.
Derek S. Sells, a lawyer for the Dorismond family, said the family continued to believe that criminal charges should be filed against the detective, Anthony Vasquez.
”There’s no amount of money that can replace Patrick,” Mr. Sells said. ”The family is more concerned with trying to achieve complete justice.”
The grand jury that heard evidence from the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, decided not to indict the detective in July 2000. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan then said that they would review whether any federal civil rights laws had been violated.
Mr. Sells said yesterday that the family remained hopeful that Detective Vasquez would be charged. Detective Vasquez has said race played no role in the shooting. Yesterday, Marvin Smilon, a spokesman for the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, said the federal prosecutors could not comment because ”the case is still open.”
Detective Vasquez’s lawyer, Philip Karasyk, yesterday described Mr. Dorismond’s death as a tragic event but said there was no basis for prosecution. ”We feel justice has been done,” Mr. Karasyk said, ”when the grand jury determined there was no criminal conduct on the part of Detective Vasquez.”
Mr. Karasyk said his client, who was on modified duty for a time after the shooting, was restored to full duty last fall.
Mr. Morgenthau said after the state grand jury inquiry that the evidence showed that Mr. Dorismond, 26, was offended when Detective Vasquez, an undercover narcotics detective, asked him if he had any crack cocaine as he waited for a taxi outside the Wakamba Cocktail Lounge, a bar on Eighth Avenue near 37th Street.
Mr. Dorismond was killed by a bullet fired from a 9-millimeter pistol, at a range so close it was touching his clothing. Mr. Morgenthau said the grand jury had concluded that Detective Vasquez and Mr. Dorismond struggled over the detective’s gun after a confrontation and that the detective ”did not intentionally pull the trigger.”
Kevin Kaiser, a friend of Mr. Dorismond who was with him at the shooting, also sued the city, claiming that he was assaulted by the police and suffered psychological distress. His lawyer, Sanford A. Rubenstein, said yesterday that he expected settlement talks to begin soon.
The death of Mr. Dorismond drew wide attention, in part because it came while other issues were swirling around Mr. Giuliani, including criticism by some who said minorities bore the brunt of his aggressive law enforcement polices.
Source:New York times
Bad credit hinders police applicants www.privateofficer.com
GREENVILLE, S.C.Aug 11 2010
Credit background checks are an important part of the police recruiting process at law enforcement agencies across the country. But Greenville Police Chief Terri Wilfong said finding recruits with good credit has become more difficult in recent years.
“A lot of people think, ‘Oh, you have (recruiting) problems because of drugs.’ No, it’s because of finances,” Wilfong told News 4′s Tim Waller.
The Greenville Police Department is currently trying to fill 12 police officer vacancies. But officials said an increasing number of applicants are unable to pass the credit background check.
“A lot of these young kids, young adults, they get these credit cards, and they don’t pay them on time, or they forget, or whatever the case may be, and they get into financial difficulty, and we cannot hire an individual whose financial status is bad,” Wilfong said.
Wilfong said credit histories are important in police-hiring because they reflect an applicant’s ability to manage not only themselves, but also those they are sworn to protect. She said substandard credit histories, coupled with the fact that fewer young people are pursuing law enforcement careers, has made the recruiting process more difficult.
“I mean, you have to give up a lot of family time. You have to work weekends. You have to work holidays. We have special events, and it’s tough,” she said.
Facial recognition helps catch criminals at DMV offices www.privateofficer.com
New York Aug 11 2010 Minutes after an armored car made its delivery of cash to the EAB bank in Lake Success, N.Y., the masked robbers struck.
Claude Bird and his accomplice, a man known only as “Angel,” escaped with $240,000 on that day in March 1993, and none of the money was ever recovered.
Bird was tracked by law enforcement to his native country of Jamaica, where he escaped from jail the following year while awaiting extradition.
He was a free man for the next 17 years, but now he is back behind bars, thanks to new facial-recognition technology deployed by New York’s Department of Motor Vehicles.
On Tuesday, Gov. David A. Paterson and other New York officials touted the benefits of the new system, which was deployed across the state in February. They said it had helped them arrest more than 150 would-be imposters, including Bird, as well as an Egyptian on the terrorist watch list and a former Mafia hit man.
The new technology, which was tested for two years to iron out potential wrinkles in its deployment, had helped “bolster national security, neighborhood security and highway safety,” Mr. Paterson said at a press briefing in New York City.
“I am tremendously proud of the success we have seen in the past six months,” the governor added, appealing to other states to follow New York’s example and predicting the technology would soon spread nationwide.
“The reality is, there will be a time, we hope, when this becomes a national policy,” Mr. Paterson said.
Thirty-five states currently use some form of facial-recognition technology, according to AAMVA, the Association of American Motor Vehicle Administrators.
The $2.5 million system, paid for with a federal grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, basically converts the digital photograph of an applicant into a mathematical algorithm — a numerical representation of the unique and relatively permanent underlying structures of the face.
Police say Fantasia Barrino attempted suicide www.privateofficer.com
Charlotte NC Aug 11 2010 A police report has classified the overdose of ‘American Idol’ winner Fantasia Barrino as a “suicide/overdose,” according to MTV.com. Her manager says she ingested a sleep aid and aspirin after reading a court complaint from a woman who says Barrino had an affair with her husband, according to TMZ.
Manager Brian Dickens claims Barrino overdosed on the drugs after she read documents filed by Paula Cook, which allege Barrino had a year-long affair with her husband, Antwaun Cook, made a sex tape with him, and then telephoned her making malicious statements about the relationship.
Dickens was the person who called 911 to report Barrino had overdosed, telling authorities that something was wrong with the star. RadarOnline reports that police were responding to a “suicide attempt call.”
MTV reports that sources said when police arrived on scene, Barrino was in a closet in her Charlotte, North Carolina home. She was immediately taken to Mercy South Hospital at Carolinas Medical Center in Pineville.
“Fantasia is heartbroken and is sorry for any pain she may have caused,” Dickens wrote in a statement to CNN. “Yesterday she was totally overwhelmed by the lawsuit and the media attention.”
Neon Limelight reports that Barrino is expected to be released from the hospital sometime on Tuesday. Her representative said “Fantasia is stable now… Fantasia is a fighter and a survivor.”
Murder-suicide at busy Chicago mall www.privateofficer.com
Chicago IL Aug 11 2010 Police in Chicago Ridge investigating a murder suicide in the parking lot of a busy mall.
It happened just after 6 p.m. at the Chicago Ridge Mall on 95th and Ridgeland.
The shooter is reported to be a man in his 50′s. The female victim was in her 40′s. She was getting off the bus and walking to her car, which she had left at the mall, when she saw him.
Police say she told her friends to call 911 and seconds later he fired his revolver.
First, he fired two shots and once she fell to the ground he fired another two shots. He then turned the gun on himself.
Police blocked off the parking lot but the mall remained open. The identities of the two victims have not been released.
Source:WGN
